Not a death-metal Billy Idol cover band but a lyrical tragedy written by Federico Garcia Lorca in 1932, last weekend's production of Blood Wedding at SPACE Gallery was at turns graceful and punishingly fraught. In a welcome break from the diminutive "pit orchestras" and perfunctory, piped-in transition music of local community theater, Tess Van Horn's show incorporated the diverse talents of a six-member band, consisting of members of Hersey State, Selbyville, and other local ambient/folk projects. The play's score, with lyrics derived from Lorca's poetry, was sold in multiple formats at the show, and limited physical and unlimited digital copies are available at teafirstrecords.blogspot.com.

Ingeniously, the musicians began the play separated from the story, with a mournful overture of wordless comforts and unsettled Americana, then slowly integrated themselves into the fabric of the tragedy. A lullaby sung by Aren Sprinkle and Emily Dix Thomas, two of Portland's most beatific voices, slowly gave way to the vocal talents of the cast. The transition culminated in Blood Wedding's stirring centerpiece, the five-minute "Wedding March," a procession of ultimately naive, rustic sentiment sung by the entire cast as they approached the altar; amid the pomp, both musicians and characters portray an inkling of the thorny doom to come. The symbiosis complete, a percussive "Fight Theme," adorned with atmospherics and electric guitar, is amplified by the determined, rhythmic stomping of three actors chopping down a tree.

The soundtrack album, well recorded and mastered with vocals exclusively by the band, is as solid an EP as it is a charming memento. More of this interdisciplinary entrepreneurialism, please.

TEN YEARS, A WAVE | September 26, 2014 As the festival has evolved, examples of Fowlie’s preferred breed of film—once a small niche of the documentary universe—have become a lot more common, a lot more variegated, and a lot more accomplished.

GIRLS (AND BOYS) ON FILM | July 11, 2014 The Maine International Film Festival, now in its 17th year in Waterville, remains one of the region’s more ambitious cultural institutions, less bound by a singular ambition than a desire to convey the breadth and depth of cinema’s past and present. (This, and a healthy dose of music and human-interest documentaries.) On that account, MIFF ’14 is an impressive achievement, offering area filmgoers its best program in years. With so much to survey, let’s make haste with the recommendations. (Particularly emphatic suggestions are marked in bold print.)

AMERICAN VALUES | June 11, 2014 The Immigrant seamlessly folds elements of New York history and the American promise into a story about the varieties of captivity and loyalty.

CHARACTER IS POLITICAL | April 10, 2014 Kelly Reichardt, one of the most admired and resourceful voices in American independent cinema, appears at the Portland Museum of Art Friday night to participate in a weekend-long retrospective of her three most recent films.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX | April 09, 2014 Throughout its two volumes and four hours of explicit sexuality, masochism, philosophical debate, and self-analysis, Nymphomaniac remains the steadfast vision of a director talking to himself, and assuming you’ll be interested enough in him to listen and pay close attention.